"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." -Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", 1921
Alcohol prohibition is often acknowledged as a complete failure. Why do we not see the same effects from our Drug War? The only people impacted by the laws are mules, small scale dealers and the users. This has no effect on the major sellers and distributors. In fact, the CIA has helped promote and protect drug lords. By making any drug completely illegal, it creates an economic vacuum which can ONLY be filled by organized crime. The global drug trade is estimated to be worth more than $400 billion per year.
This is reason enough to dismantle the entire system. H.R. Haldemann, Nixon’s chief of staff, recorded in his diary, “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”
Whites - 74% of illicit drug users, 19% DW prisoners
Blacks - 11% of illicit drug users, 57% DW prisoners
2.4 million children in the US have parents in jail due to the Drug War
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html
Drug War victims
http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/drugten.html
10 simple and obvious problems the drug war causes
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Dangerous drugs like alcohol and tobacco kill ten times more Americans every year than all other illegal drugs combined. The cheapness of drugs usually drives out alcohol. Many anti-drug commercials are funded by the alcohol and tobacco industry. Our approach to these drugs is rational – with regulations to ensure it causes no more harm than it should. Our approach to illegal drugs is that they are all bad; the drugs and the person. It’s primitive.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man. Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - G. Bernard Shaw
In depth 10 page paper on the Drug War and California's Budget Crisis http://www.geocities.com/kedopuk/DrugWarCalifornia.pdf
These problems would vanish if prohibition became effective or the laws were abolished:
- Cost to nation
- Loss of “victims'' economic value.
- Maintenance machinery of prohibition; inspectors, spies etc., support of convicts.
- Loss of dignity, by making physicians and pharmacists subject to police degrades those professions, keeps away the best class of men from them, and so destroys the nation's health.
7thdirection
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